Heritage · 3rd millennium BC
Nilotic languages have ancient South Sudanese roots.
Did you know that linguists trace the Nilotic languages, now spoken by the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk and their cousins from South Sudan to Tanzania, back to a Proto-Nilotic people who had formed by the third millennium BC?
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Geography · AD 61
Nero's explorers were stopped by the Sudd.
Did you know that around AD 61 a party of Roman soldiers sent by Emperor Nero sailed up the White Nile looking for its source but were stopped by the Sudd, which marked the limit of Roman penetration into equatorial Africa?
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Heritage · c. 14th–15th century
Kenya's Luo trace roots to South Sudan.
Did you know that the Luo peoples of Uganda and western Kenya, the community of Barack Obama's father, are believed to have dispersed from a Nilotic core region in South Sudan, a migration still traced through clan oral histories?
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Myth or fact · late 15th century
Shilluk founder vanished in a whirlwind.
Did you know that Nyikang, the culture hero who founded the Shilluk Kingdom in the late 15th century, is said by legend never to have died but to have vanished in a whirlwind in the middle of a battle?
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Society · 17th century
Even the Shilluk king went raiding.
Did you know that in the 17th century the Shilluk regularly raided and looted neighbouring peoples north and south along the White Nile, and that the reth, their divine king, took part in the raiding himself?
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Heritage · 18th century
An aristocratic clan built the Azande kingdoms.
Did you know that the Azande kingdoms were built in the 18th century by the Avungara, a ruling aristocratic clan whose princes carved out states across the borderlands of today's South Sudan, Central African Republic and Congo?
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Society · early 19th century
The Nuer expanded all the way to Ethiopia.
Did you know that in the 19th century the Nuer expanded eastward from around Bentiu all the way to the western fringes of Ethiopia, displacing and absorbing many Dinka, Anyuak and Burun communities along the way?
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Firsts · 1839–1841
Egyptian boats finally pierced the Sudd.
Did you know that the Sudd swamps kept outsiders off the upper White Nile until 1839–1841, when Egyptian river expeditions under the Turkish naval captain Salim Qapudan finally forced their way through, opening the south to ivory and slave traders?
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Firsts · 1852
An early Nile mission lasted seven years.
Did you know that the Austrian Catholic missionary Ignatius Knoblecher founded a mission at Gondokoro, a Nile trading post near today's Juba, in 1852, but that it was abandoned only seven years later in 1859?
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Science · 13 February 1863
Speke reached Gondokoro with the Nile's secret.
Did you know that John Hanning Speke and James Grant staggered into Gondokoro on 13 February 1863 after a two-year, five-month trek from Zanzibar, bringing the news that Lake Victoria was the Nile's source?
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Heritage · 1871
Gondokoro was briefly renamed Ismailia.
Did you know that when Samuel Baker annexed the upper Nile for Egypt's Khedive in 1871, he renamed the trading post of Gondokoro 'Ismailia' in his master's honour, though the name never stuck?
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Economy · 1873
A slave trader became an Egyptian governor.
Did you know that Egypt's Khedive Isma'il made the slave trader al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur governor of Bahr el Ghazal, and that his feud with General Charles Gordon later gave him near-mythic status in Britain?
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Science · 1878
Equatoria's governor was a museum collector.
Did you know that Equatoria's governor from 1878, the German-born physician Emin Pasha, was a gifted linguist and naturalist who collected thousands of plant and animal specimens for European museums while running the province?
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Records · April 1888
Emin Pasha did not want rescuing.
Did you know that Henry Morton Stanley's expedition to 'rescue' Emin Pasha, cut off in Equatoria by the Mahdist revolt, saw its advance column lose more than half its men crossing the Ituri forest, and Emin was reluctant to leave?
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Geography · 1894
Belgium's king once leased part of South Sudan.
Did you know that from 1894 to 1910 King Leopold II of Belgium leased the Lado Enclave, a slice of today's South Sudan and Uganda west of the Nile, which reverted to Sudan after his death?
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Records · 17 February 1897
Congolese troops drove the Mahdists from Rejaf.
Did you know that on 17 February 1897 Belgian-led Congo Free State troops under Louis-Napoléon Chaltin defeated about 2,000 Mahdist fighters at Rejaf, near Juba, permanently expelling the Mahdists from the region?
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Records · 18 September 1898
A Shilluk town almost started a European war.
Did you know that at Fashoda, the Shilluk royal town, Captain Marchand's small French force, after crossing Africa from the Atlantic, faced Kitchener's five gunboats and 1,500 troops in 1898, nearly sparking an Anglo-French war?
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Heritage · 1904
Fashoda was renamed to bury a crisis.
Did you know that in 1904, as Britain and France sealed the Entente Cordiale, the British renamed Fashoda as Kodok, hoping to erase the memory of the 1898 crisis that had nearly set them at war?
Sources
Heritage · 1905
Yambio is named after a warrior king.
Did you know that the Azande king Gbudwe, who ruled from about 1870 until 1905, was born Mbio, meaning a small antelope, and renamed himself Gbudwe, 'to tear out a man's intestines'; the town of Yambio bears his name?
Sources
Language · April 1928
A 1928 conference made English the school language.
Did you know that the Rejaf Language Conference of April 1928 decided that schooling in southern Sudan would be in English rather than Arabic, a colonial choice that helps explain why English is South Sudan's official language today?
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Society · 1930
Britain sealed the South off from the North.
Did you know that Britain's 1930 Southern Policy ran southern Sudan as a closed district, requiring permits for northern traders, discouraging Arabic and Islamic dress, and encouraging Christian missionary schools?
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Science · 1937
Azande consulted chickens through a poison oracle.
Did you know that anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard's 1937 classic on the Azande described their poison oracle, in which a substance called benge was fed to chickens and the bird's death or survival answered a question?
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Culture · 1940
Cattle are the thread of Nuer life.
Did you know that in his 1940 study The Nuer, anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote that cattle are 'the thread that runs through Nuer institutions, language, rites of passage' and politics?
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Society · 18 August 1955
War began before Sudan was even independent.
Did you know that South Sudan's first civil war is usually dated from 18 August 1955, when southern soldiers of the Equatoria Corps mutinied at Torit, months before Sudan itself became independent?
Sources
Language · 1963
Anyanya means 'snake venom'.
Did you know that the Anyanya, the southern rebel army founded in 1963 during the first civil war, took its name from a Ma'di word meaning 'snake venom'?
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Society · 1964
Foreign missionaries were expelled in 1964.
Did you know that in 1964 the military government of General Ibrahim Abboud expelled all foreign Christian missionaries from southern Sudan, accusing them of stoking the rebellion?
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Society · 27 February 1972
An emperor helped end the first war.
Did you know that the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, brokered with help from Emperor Haile Selassie and church mediators, ended a 17-year war and gave the South its own regional government in Juba for a decade?
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Science · 1978
A giant excavator rusts by the canal.
Did you know that the Jonglei Canal, meant to bypass the Sudd, was 240 of 360 kilometres dug when the SPLA halted work in 1984, and its giant German-built excavator 'Sarah' still rusts there, visible in satellite images?
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Science · 1981
The rebel leader had an Iowa PhD.
Did you know that John Garang, founder of the SPLA, earned a PhD in economics from Iowa State University in 1981, having studied agricultural development in southern Sudan, before leading the rebellion two years later?
Sources
Society · 16 May 1983
SPLA Day marks the 1983 Bor mutiny.
Did you know that South Sudan marks SPLA Day on 16 May, the anniversary of the 1983 mutiny of southern troops at Bor, led by Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, that sparked the second civil war?
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Sport · 1985
More blocks than points in the NBA.
Did you know that Dinka basketball player Manute Bol, listed at up to 7 ft 7 in, is the only NBA player to retire with more career blocked shots than points scored?
Sources
Society · 1987
20,000 boys walked to survive the war.
Did you know that more than 20,000 'Lost Boys of Sudan', mostly Dinka and Nuer, trekked hundreds of kilometres to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and about 3,800 were resettled in the United States in 2001?
Sources
Firsts · 1989
A UN first: aid via rebel negotiations.
Did you know that Operation Lifeline Sudan, launched in 1989, was the first time the United Nations negotiated with a non-state rebel movement, the SPLM/A, to deliver aid inside a country at war?
Sources
Myth or fact · March 1993
The 'vulture girl' was a boy who survived.
Did you know that the starving child in Kevin Carter's Pulitzer-winning 1993 vulture photograph, taken at Ayod, was revealed in 2011 to be a boy, Kong Nyong, who survived that famine but died of fever around 2007?
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Society · 1999
Dinka and Nuer chiefs made peace at Wunlit.
Did you know that the 1999 Wunlit peace conference, organised by the New Sudan Council of Churches in a Warrap village, brought Dinka and Nuer chiefs together to end years of local fighting through a people-to-people covenant?
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Records · 30 July 2005
Garang was vice president for three weeks.
Did you know that John Garang served as First Vice President of Sudan for only about three weeks after the 2005 peace deal before dying in a helicopter crash on 30 July 2005?
Sources
Geography · July 2009
Abyei's border went to The Hague.
Did you know that the boundary of the oil-rich Abyei area was sent to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, whose 2009 ruling redrew it, yet Abyei's final status remains unresolved?
Sources
Heritage · May 2009
A Nuer prophet's rod came home in 2009.
Did you know that the sacred rod, or dang, of the Nuer prophet Ngundeng Bong, taken by the British in the colonial era, was returned to southern Sudan in May 2009 by historian Douglas H. Johnson?
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Culture · August 2010
The anthem title is a cheer.
Did you know that South Sudan's national anthem, 'South Sudan Oyee!', was chosen through a competition launched in August 2010, nearly a year before independence, and that 'Oyee' is a cheer meaning roughly 'hurrah'?
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Records · January 2011
98.83% voted for independence.
Did you know that in the January 2011 independence referendum 98.83% of voters chose to separate from Sudan, one of the most lopsided results in any such vote?
Sources
Records · 9 July 2011
The world's youngest country.
Did you know that South Sudan, independent on 9 July 2011 and admitted to the United Nations five days later as its 193rd member, is still the world's youngest widely recognised country?
Sources
Economy · 18 July 2011
Garang's face is on every banknote.
Did you know that the South Sudanese pound was introduced on 18 July 2011, just nine days after independence, at par with the Sudanese pound, and its banknotes carry the portrait of John Garang?
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Economy · January 2012
South Sudan switched off its own oil.
Did you know that in January 2012 South Sudan shut down its entire oil production, the source of nearly all government revenue, in a dispute with Sudan over fees for using the pipeline to Port Sudan?
Sources
Sport · August 2012
He ran the Olympics under no flag.
Did you know that marathon runner Guor Marial, refusing to run for Sudan because South Sudan had no Olympic committee yet, competed at London 2012 as an Independent Olympic Athlete and finished 47th?
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Sport · 5 September 2015
Football's first win came in 2015.
Did you know that South Sudan's national football team won its first official match on 5 September 2015, beating Equatorial Guinea 1–0 at home in a qualifier for the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations?
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Sport · August 2016
Half the first Refugee Team was South Sudanese.
Did you know that five of the ten athletes on the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team at Rio 2016 were South Sudanese runners who had been scouted in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp?
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Records · February 2017
The world's first famine declaration since 2011.
Did you know that the famine declared in February 2017 in parts of Unity State was the first formal famine declaration anywhere in the world since Somalia in 2011?
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Culture · 11 April 2019
The Pope kissed South Sudan's leaders' feet.
Did you know that at a Vatican retreat on 11 April 2019, Pope Francis knelt and kissed the feet of Salva Kiir, Riek Machar and other South Sudanese leaders, begging them to keep the peace?
Sources
Firsts · February 2023
Three church leaders travelled to Juba together.
Did you know that Pope Francis's February 2023 visit to Juba was an unprecedented joint 'pilgrimage of peace' with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland?
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Culture · 25 August 2023
The wrong flag shade is now illegal.
Did you know that since August 2023 it has been illegal in South Sudan to print the national flag with a dark blue triangle or a tilted star, after authorities fixed the correct light blue, upright-star version?
Sources
Sport · September 2023
Basketball's Bright Stars won an Olympic ticket.
Did you know that at the 2023 FIBA World Cup South Sudan, led by federation president and ex-NBA star Luol Deng, finished as the best African team and qualified for its first Olympics?
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Sport · 28 July 2024
Bright Stars nearly beat Team USA.
Did you know that South Sudan's Bright Stars beat Puerto Rico 90–79 in Lille for their first Olympic win at Paris 2024, days after nearly upsetting the United States in a 101–100 exhibition?
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Nature · June 2024
Six million antelope on the move.
Did you know that aerial surveys announced in June 2024 counted about six million antelope, mainly white-eared kob, tiang, Mongalla gazelle and reedbuck, in the 'Great Nile Migration', called the world's largest land mammal migration?
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Society · September 2025
A vice president went on trial for treason.
Did you know that in September 2025 First Vice President Riek Machar, detained since March, was suspended and put on trial before a special court in Juba on treason and other charges linked to clashes in Nasir?
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Firsts · 22 December 2026
Fifteen years without a national election.
Did you know that South Sudan has never held a general election since independence, after its first vote was postponed from 2015 to 2018, 2021, 2023, 2024 and now to 22 December 2026?
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Geography ·
In floods, the Sudd covers a fifth.
Did you know that the Sudd, whose name comes from the Arabic for 'barrier', averages over 30,000 square kilometres and can swell to more than 130,000 in the wet season, about a fifth of South Sudan?
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Nature ·
Antelope herds cross into Ethiopia every year.
Did you know that Boma National Park, created in 1977 and covering 22,800 square kilometres, forms with Bandingilo National Park and Ethiopia's Gambella a landscape that antelope herds cross every year?
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Culture ·
Young men sing songs to their oxen.
Did you know that young Dinka and Nuer men traditionally take a 'bull name' from the colour pattern of a favourite song ox, then compose and sing praise songs about it in the dry-season cattle camps?
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Records ·
The Dinka are among Africa's tallest peoples.
Did you know that the Dinka, together with the Tutsi of Rwanda, are counted among Africa's tallest peoples, with one study of Dinka Agaar men recording an average height of 182.6 centimetres?
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Culture ·
Mundari herders dye hair with cow urine.
Did you know that Mundari men sometimes wash their hair in cow urine, whose uric acid tints it red, yellow or orange, which they regard as beautiful, while their prized long-horned cattle are coated in protective ash?
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Language ·
Juba Arabic is a homegrown lingua franca.
Did you know that Juba Arabic, called South Sudanese Arabic since 2011, began as a 19th-century pidgin among descendants of Sudanese soldiers and has a simplified grammar shaped by Dinka, Bari, Pojulu and Shilluk?
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Language ·
Over 60 languages, but English is official.
Did you know that South Sudan has over 60 indigenous languages, including Dinka, Nuer and Bari, yet English, introduced in colonial schools, is the only official language?
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Heritage ·
The Shilluk king carries Nyikang's spirit.
Did you know that every Shilluk reth, or king, is believed to come from the divine lineage of the founding hero Nyikang, whose spirit is thought to affect the health of the whole nation?
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Geography ·
Mount Kinyeti towers 3,187 metres high.
Did you know that South Sudan's highest point, Mount Kinyeti in the Imatong Mountains near the Ugandan border, rises to 3,187 metres, far above the flat floodplains and swamps that cover most of the country?
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Geography ·
The Nile changes its name inside South Sudan.
Did you know that the Nile enters South Sudan at Nimule as the Bahr al Jabal, the 'Mountain Nile', and only becomes the White Nile in the strict sense at Lake No, where it meets the Bahr el Ghazal?
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Nature ·
An eagle holds a spear and a spade.
Did you know that South Sudan's coat of arms shows an African fish eagle holding a crossed spear and spade, symbolising the resolve to defend the nation and to work hard to feed it?
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